THE SHOW:

Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music is a legendary collection of music indigenous to our nation's people. Released in 1952, it rescued material that would have otherwise been left to obscurity. As the story goes, when Smith discovered that old 78rpm records were being melted down for scrap during WWII, he went around buying up as many platters as he could lay his hands on. The resulting collection was astounding, at one point totaling 20,000 albums. He then chose the best for a series of thematic records to reintroduce the public to these lost gems. Through the '60s and the folk movement, Harry Smith gathered in reputation, and by the '90s, he had been awarded a Grammy for his achievement and the Anthology was reissued on CD. The influence of these records reaches far and wide. For instance, there would have been no O Brother, Where Art Thou? without them, and just last year, Depeche Mode reinterpreted "John the Revelator" as an electro-glam stomp on their Playing the Angel album. Countless musicians number the Anthology of American Folk Music among their influences.

And from this, the Harry Smith Project was born. From 1999 to 2001, producer Hal Willner organized five nights of concerts in London, New York, and Los Angeles, gathering performers of all stripes to interpret the music Harry Smith had given to them. This 2-DVD, 2-CD set chronicles that undertaking.

Twenty-three performances are put together on the "Concert Film" DVD, showcasing the wide diversity of the singers the Anthology has inspired and the multitude of approaches that can be taken to bring the folk, gospel, country, and blues songs Harry Smith curated into a modern setting. Some of the performers--Elvis Costello, David Johansen, Nick Cave, Beth Orton--stay pretty true to the feel of the originals while still maintaining their own unique sound. Others, like Lou Reed and Sonic Youth (collaborating with vocalist/trombone player Roswell Rudd), bend the songs to fit their signature playing. Don Byron, Percy Heath, and Bill Frisell even go so far as to perform "This Song of Love" as interpretive jazz. Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean also revive their Folksmen characters from A Mighty Wind to sing their loving parody "Old Joe's Place," their humor being another facet of the cultural resonance of the Anthology of American Folk Music.

The concert film is fairly straightforward. Each song is introduced with a graphic of its entry in the old Anthology, and between every couple of numbers, a little interview or backstage footage is edited in to break things up. You don't have to be a fan of the original tunes to enjoy the concert, but the breadth of your appreciation may depend on how you feel about the participants. As someone who can't stand Beck's froggy yodel, for instance, I wasn't too hot on his take on "Last Fair Deal Gone Down." Gavin Friday really hams it up for his performance of "When that Great Ship Went Down," showing his glam rock character in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto was not much of a stretch. He is only outdone by David Thomas, whose obnoxious rendition of "Fishing Blues" closes out the disc. Given that the song was chosen to finish the show because it was also the last song on Smith's anthology, I wish they'd have assigned it to a singer who was at least tolerable.

If you want to hear more of the music, this set comes with two CDs from the concerts. It has the same numbers as the DVD, as well as twelve more. Many of the additional songs are from the same people as in the movie, but there are also tracks by people who didn't make it into the final edit, including Van Dyke Parks with the Mondrian String Quartet, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Wilco, and Marianne Faithfull.

The second DVD in The Harry Smith Project is a documentary film, The Old, Weird America. Intercutting concert footage and contemporary interviews with archival performances by the original artists and footage of Smith himself, the filmmakers tell the story of Smith's musical journey while exploring the social impact it has had. In addition to Willner and many of the performers from the concert, there are long segments with cultural critic Greil Marcus (who coined the "old, weird" phrase) and the poet Allen Ginsberg, Smith's friend. There are also pieces of songs from concert participants that were not on the live DVD, including Elliott Sharp, John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful, and Jarvis Cocker. The organic construction of the film, weaving between old and new performances while laying out the Harry Smith story, works well, and it creates a real understanding of why the Smith collection (his original records are now at the Smithsonian) is still so vital in 2006.

THE DVD

Video:
All of the footage was shot in full frame, and the video transfer is excellent.

Sound:
You can choose between fantastic 2.0 and 5.1 sound mixes, each preserving the music's full sonic power. Given the reverence that all involved have for Harry Smith and his endeavors, it's clear that the final product was treated with absolute respect.

Extras:
The documentary DVD has three bonus features in the form of the abstract films Harry Smith made. They animate his paintings and were intended to be accompanied by music. One of the shorts is seen as part of the concert, introduced by Philip Glass, who plays "Etude No. 10" on the piano alongside the images. That performance is presented here, along with the two other movies and improvisational pieces by DJ Shadow ("HS Tone Poem" played on turntables) and Mocean Worker (the ambient electronic "Harry Goes a Courtin' (The Mowo! Live Hootenanny Throw-Down)"). It's up to you to mix and match the visual and the audio. Two of the films are essentially moving colors and shapes, and the third is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Python work. Harry Smith was once again ahead of his time. He could have had a career designing projections for dance clubs.

The packaging for The Harry Smith Project is a cardboard box that is 12" across (like an old vinyl record). Each disc is in a plastic jewel case that lays inside the box. There is also a 12" booklet with essays by Rani Singh, the curator of the Harry Smith Collection; Hal Willner; Izzy Young, founder of the Folklore Center; Grant Alden, founder of No Depression magazine (named for one of the songs on the Anthology); and Jeff Place from the Smithsonian. The design is decorated with photos from the concerts and quotes from the musicians. The back pages list the dates and full line-ups of the five concerts, a timeline tracking the history of the songs from Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877 to notations about who has recorded Anthology songs in 2006, and a full tracklist of the four discs in the Harry Smith Project set.

It should be noted that there are some errors in packaging. On the first music CD, Richard Thompson's name is misprinted as Thomas, and Nick Cave's "John the Revelator" is swapped with Eric Mingus and Gary Lucas' recording of "Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting?" I mainly noticed these glitches because the online music database that works with my iTunes repeated the errors when I was dumping the songs to my iPod. No big deal, really, but there you have it.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The Harry Smith Project is a special combination of concept and design, bringing music and film together in one expansive package that should appeal to music fans interested in the history of the material and new listeners who might enjoy the variety of performers represented. In the midst of all the great songs is Harry Smith, a truly unique character from the American tableaux. His story goes hand-in-hand with the rich mythology of the music. It's not just about songs, it's about what they mean. Highly Recommended.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent projects include the futuristic romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Archer Coe and the Thousand Natural Shocks, a loopy crime tale drawn by Dan Christensen; and the horror miniseries Madame Frankenstein, a collaboration with Megan Levens. Follow Rich's blog at Confessions123.com.